Pre E3 Housecleaning
Haven't updated in a while, mostly because there hasn't been anything of merit going on at all, life-wise or game-wise. I've had some rad times with friends, but that's where Facebook comes into play. This really isn't the place where I go "CHECK OUT HOW I ROCKED KARAOKE" (even though I totally did). This is a place to get out whatever lodges in my head and I think would be interesting to read.So now that we've gotten that out of the way, a couple big news things. First off, Capcom recently announced that they're definitely not having new characters be available for download via downloadable content for Street Fighter 4. The reason they cited was that they don't want players to have an unfair advantage over others, they want SFIV to be a complete package.
Capcom, don't shit in my mouth and tell me it's chocolate, okay? I know what you're trying to do. Everyone who's ever played a fighting game knows. This game got made (and made you fucking hundreds of millions) because you wanted to please a long-neglected-yet-loyal fanbase and it paid off. Don't turn around and pretend we're fucking idiots who don't pay attention.
For those of you not understanding where I'm going with this, Capcom is clearly planning to release Street Fighter 4: EX plus Alpha Cross Counter Cream Cheese and Eggplant Tournament Edition. Every Street Fighter game has had three, sometimes more re-mixes and re-releases, even the bad ones. Capcom is the undisputed king of re-releasing and re-making old shit. So instead of getting with the fucking times, Capcom's going to let their Japanese shine through and do what they've always done: they'll throw four new characters on the disc, maybe some new concept art or some shit, some new achievements maybe, and sell it for fifty bucks.
What burns me up is how everybody loses with this plan of action. Capcom loses because no one is going to buy SFIV again just to play with fucking T-Hawk, Dee Jay and Birdie or some shit. They are going to waste a shitload of money trying to pull this little stunt, whereas if they just set up a downloadable character mill and threw one out every couple months, it would be almost pure profit. No production costs, very little advertising budget, very little overhead. Activision has made incredible, stomach churning amounts of money from selling fucking Rock Band songs, and Capcom just doesn't get it. The examples of the monetary possibilities are right fucking there and Capcom is simply too Japanese to do anything other than what they've traditionally done for two goddamned decades. Plus, it's not like they couldn't do their SF4: Fourth Strike Gamma The Quest For Peace anyway! There are plenty of examples of downloadable content being sold on a seperate retail disc. It happens all the time.
The FANS lose because they don't get any more value for the product they already bought, and if they want more out of it, they're going to be stuck shelling out fifty bucks for very little. They lose out on a sustainable, professional fighting game experience, and instead get the same old shit that they've put up with for two decades.
Also, their excuse has to be the lamest cover story i've ever heard. Capcom went from a few months ago going "if fans want it, we can totally offer new characters via download" to "THAT WOULD BE UNBALANCED NO WAY". Oh yeah? Well what if I fight someone online who's unlocked fucking Akuma and I haven't been able to yet? I suppose that's totally fair, right? You know, I bet those guys are in some office somewhere chuckling to themselves, thinking they're so clever and they just really don't have a goddamned clue.
Second off, 3D Realms closed, and took with it the last hope that Duke Nukem Forever would ever get released. For those of you not in the know, DNF was the industry's running gag. The game was announced as a follow up to the legendary Duke Nukem 3D TWELVE YEARS AGO and has "been in production" ever since. This game has been promised for most of the time most of you reading this have been alive on this planet. Still, every year 3D Realms would say "we're still working on it, it'll come out when it's done". For most people, they went "Uh, all right, whatever" and promptly forgot about it again, especially over a decade after the fact. For me, I always wanted to see the thing come out and be awesome, because the original Duke was pretty much the perfect game to me. Not really my favorite or the best game, but my idea of what the ideal game should strive for: Technologically pushing boundries, fun and creative on the gameplay side, and injected with a huge dose of humor and tounge-in-cheek satire. To me, a new Duke Nukem is what this current generation of gaming needed to remind it that incredibly serious FPS's are kind of stupid and lame.
However, twelve years? Twelve years. At first, it was understandable. Back in the day when DNF was first announced, computer graphics technology was literally evolving every week. It was moving so fast that the engine one game was built on was outdated in a month, never to be seen again. The people at 3D Realms wanted DNF to be the best thing ever, so they kept scrapping what they'd done to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak.
That only explains the first SIX YEARS however. Valve has used the Source engine for what, like 5 years now? Any halfway hardworking company could have used that engine to produce something at least passable in half that time. This is my roundabout way of saying "there's really no excuse", and there isn't. Twelve years and literally all we have is a handful of screenshots (and I do mean a handful) spanning over a decade, a teaser trailer that featured nothing exceptional, and a few pictures of concept art that were leaked after the studio shut down.
Let me put something into perspective for you: less than a week after Free Radical was shut down, a very lengthy video consisting entirely of gameplay from their project Star Wars Battlefront III leaked on the net. This game hadn't even been announced, no one knew they were working on it. Recently, gameplay footage from an almost completed but cancelled anyway Aliens DS game leaked, and no one knew about that game before the footage leaked. There is a ROM out there of an unreleased, 75% completed Sega Saturn game called Sonic Xtreme, for God's sake. Duke Nukem Forever? Nothing. Not a second of gameplay footage, not a screenshot. Nothing but a handful of pages of concept art that my roommate could have done in a week, and that's including 6 hours a day of GTAIV.
Footage leaks all the time, even for games no one gives a shit about. You're telling me that in light of the biggest videogame cancellation in history, no one uploaded footage to youtube in the dead of night? No former fucked employee said "fuck it" and took a shaky cell-phone cam video? No one took unreleased promo materials and sent them directly to Gametrailers? There's an NDA so powerful out there that it keeps former employees in fear of its wrath, except when they upload concept art and then it's totally cool? Let me tell you something, there would have been footage galore had any existed, were there anything to show. If they had ANYTHING to show for twelve years of "work", i'd be able to link you to it right the fuck now. So let that sink in: An entire team of game developers got paid for twelve years with millions of dollars to go into work every day and ended up producing literally nothing. Not a fucking thing. I want so bad to read some anonymous tell-all of what it was like to work there, because I just can't imagine the scenario where something like this could happen.
E3 is just around the corner. Make sure that you watch Nintendo's press conference. The last one made history with how utterly embarrassing and terrible it was. This E3 will prove once and for all whether Nintendo still gives a shit about anything sort of resembling the actual video game market, or whether they're so arrogant and drunk on money that criticism will forevermore just bounce off them like marshmallows fired from one of those cool little marshmallow guns. Rumor has it that Miyamoto won't even be appearing, so my extremely educated and handsome guess would be that it's probably going to be a heaping helping of the latter. Whichever the case, i'm sure to rant about it here.
